The CII Women Empowerment Committee has, in fact, found that employment of women is concentrated in a few sectors which have 20 to 35 per cent women employees. In a report titled `Make Corporates Women Friendly,' the committee, set up by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), has found women employment concentrated mainly in banking, IT, IT-enabled units, media, travel, advertising and market research.

What makes the scenario worse is that employment of women in these sectors is also concentrated at administrative and junior levels which account for 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the employment. Top level employment is either extremely limited or absent.

At the senior management level, there are only 10 to 20 per cent women in these sectors. As for other industries, such as sales, manufacturing and technical support, employment of women is below 10 per cent and in many cases below 5 per cent.

The corporates, however, give only one side of the picture. From the women's point of view, the study finds the absence of respectful and conducive work environment as the biggest hurdle in women's employment. Too much aggression and lack of women-friendly work habits, excessive travel and mobility constraints are some of the factors that contribute to the problem.

A shocking aspect of the study is that a majority of the companies do not feel that anything needs to be done in their organisation and many of the MNCs track diversity ratios and initiatives because of international directives rather than local needs. Some organisations go so far as to argue that they do not want to have separate policies for women since they feel they may be discriminating. They want to be "equal" opportunity employers.

Prompted either by habit or the general subjugation to which they become used to from birth, women themselves contribute to this perception by showing reluctance to take risks without having covered all bases and generally considering men to be the quick decision-makers. Women also feel that their kin are prone to take on too much, rather than delegate work and lead by example. This lack of confidence in themselves and in their potential aggravates the problem.

A series of interactions organised by the National Commission for Women (NCW) with management representatives of various organisations, including corporates, also shows that there is virtually no effort on behalf of most companies to improve the security environment for women employees. And this, despite the clear and categorical guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court in 1997 in Vishakha Vs. the State of Rajasthan case.

But despite the clear directive from the court on the kind of preventive steps that must be taken by employers or other responsible authorities in public or private sectors, these guidelines have not really translated into a palpable change on the ground.Government departments and public institutions are the only ones that have tried, with some degree of success, to follow the court's guidelines.

The CII Women Empowerment Committee has categorised sexual harassment into three categories: employees, customers and vendors. Based on personal meetings with about 35 companies, in most cases with the head of HR, the committee has found that most companies address only their employees in the formal policy. In the case of customers, the woman is pulled off the account or is always accompanied by a male and in the case of vendors sometimes the vendor is dropped. The committee found that it is only in IT companies and MNCs that sexual harassment policies are gaining some importance.

Troubled by these findings, the CII committee has come out with several recommendations to protect women working in companies and corporates from sexual harassment. It has suggested increasing the focus on industries with high women employment to improve employment levels especially at senior levels. As for the areas of low employment, it has recommended focus on creating awareness and working on some of the barriers for women in these functions e.g. sales and technical.